xpd - my daughter has both read and watched the Hunger Games. She considers the movie to be a simple way to understand the book, and that the books contain WAY too much to fit in the movie.

Oh, she's 20 and so not a tweenie fan girl - she was actually surprised how young most of the movie goers are. She's watched a few violent R16's with us (parents) and thinks that if they'd portrayed as much violence in the movie as in the book then it would have needed the R rating... hence her surprise at the barely-teens being there.

I have yet to watch it, I've read the book. I haven't seen any of the hype - this factor alone improves any movie by at least 25%

Muddling along, being the most technical in the house, one of the oldest, and female .... hmmmmm gotta be some stereotypes busted in there somewhere.

Last couple of good movies I watched were Late Bloomers (a quietly entertaining look at getting older, with William Hurt and Isabella Rossellini), and a french animated feature called A Cat In Paris (quite innocently sweet in parts, with a novel visual style to it).

Better than all the individual movies & so well balanced with all the characters. Whedon is a master. Left the cinema thinking when I can come and see it again. Seriously good fun and man, best Hulk ever. See this movie!

I agree I thought Taken was really good too although a little messed up at places.

One movie that was not good was Haywire it was terrible there were parts of the movie where I was wondering if they were ever going to talk again and other parts where I (nearly literally) could have gotten up made a coffee to come back and have the character still running away from a person (although mostly you were just treated to watchin them run (please note in no way was it a action scene type of running either where stuff was happening just outright running)).

This movie is probably in the lead for worst of the year and probably this decade. With the people who actually starred in this too it was outright terrible, terrible acting, terrible story, terrible all around. It's so bad my brother in law who thought it looked good enough to watch now won't admit it was his idea to do so lol.

Agree with the other poster. Great movie and I saw it in 3D. Don't go until the credits are ended as like most Marvel movies, there is a coda that suggests what the next villains might be.

A couple of points. The 3D was done in post and wasn't filmed in 3D. So the effects are not as dramatic as one would normally see. OTOH Peter Jackson is shooting Hobbit in 3D with Red cameras so the 3D should be much more effective.

I was surprised the movie was in 1.85:1 aspect ratio which is unusual for a blockbuster but it was a deliberate choice by the director. As the Director of Photograher says in an interview

"The frame was composed for the 1.85:1 aspect ratio, a concept that was spearheaded by Whedon early on. Explains McGarvey, "Shooting 1.85:1 is kind of unusual for an epic film like this, but we needed the height in the screen to be able to frame in all the characters like Hulk, Captain America and Black Widow, who is much smaller. We had to give them all precedence and width within the frame. Also, Joss knew the final battle sequence was going to be this extravaganza in Manhattan, so the height and vertical scale of the buildings was going to be really important."

It certainly works and I usually feel cheated(!) if that is the right term when top an bottom mattes are placed into position to frame the native 16:9 screen for a widescreen presentation.